New finance commish: City property-tax system needs change

The city’s byzantine property-tax system needs a major overhaul because it’s filled with “unfairness and inequity,” the new finance commissioner said Tuesday.

Within minutes of his official appointment, new Department of Finance chief Jacques Jiha acknowledged that homeowners with high-valued units sometimes pay far less in taxes than those with modestly priced homes.

“It’s a major issue,” he said. “We have a lot of unfairness and inequity . . . Equally situated people should not be treated differently.”

But Jiha conceded the city could only do so much and that lawmakers would have to go to Albany to “really change the structure.”

A slew of studies have highlighted the oddities of the property-tax system — including well-intended tax caps that provide the most benefits to homeowners in the wealthiest neighborhoods.

The lucky beneficiaries include Park Slope resident Mayor Bill de Blasio, who, according to a recent study, lives in an area where owners save an average of $10,760 annually on their taxes. That’s because the value of his home has doubled since 2006, even though caps on property-tax increases have kept his bills from keeping pace. De Blasio committed to reviewing the age-old property-tax mess.

“This is a big, sprawling area of concern and we’re going to look at it very closely,” the mayor said at a City Hall press conference. “Part of why we wanted a finance commissioner with Jacques’ experience and insight is to take a whole look at the tax system of this city and look at ways to make it clearer, more transparent and more equitable.”

But he, too, acknowledged that many of the solutions require state intervention.

“First we have to come to an analysis of what is going on and what’s a better way to approach it. And then when we feel we’re on that firm ground, then we’ll start discussions with Albany,” the mayor said.

Plans to undertake an overhaul during the Bloomberg administration went nowhere.

In February, lawyers filed an unprecedented lawsuit claiming the property-tax system wasn’t only incomprehensible, but discriminatory, too. Large apartment buildings — where most renters tend to be black or Hispanic — are taxed at much higher rates than family homes, which are largely owned by whites and Asians, they said. And higher taxes on apartment buildings are transferred to tenants in the form of elevated rent.

Among the statistics cited in the court papers was that homeowners paid half as much in total taxes as owners of condos and co-ops, even though the homes were collectively assessed at twice the value.

The city’s Law Department said Tuesday that it had yet to file papers in response to the lawsuit.